There were some days I didn’t renew the blog, at first because of a deadline, then because I was tired, then I worked offline some days, now I’m again tired, but I will write this last note about my quarantine life. Actually the lockdown was loosen since May, it’s just I don’t have a reason neither motivation to go out. So probably from May this series of blogs should just be called “Hikkikomori Notes”.
Apparently, the Hikkikomori life will keep going. But there will be less things could related to the society or related to other people. And I may not have much time to update my life since more works are back.
So first I will show the only food I made carefully with heart: Shanghai style cold noodles.
Then some foods I cooked in 15 minutes. A new skill I leaned during lockdown is, to cook three meals at once and within 25 minutes.
Pasta and soup made with the same instant-pasta package:
put cheese drips in oven while cooking tortellini soup:
“Complete tomato rice”, a kind of fast risotto cooked with rice cooker:
Then I will write about some experience of going out of home.
On 25.05 I had my first take-out from a local restaurant.
On 26.05 I went to a friend’s place to take an old electronic device for my installation. On the way I was in a milktea shop first time since lockdown. You can see the lines on ground, we must stand in the queue with 1.5m distance.
On 29.05 I had a rehearsal with two musicians in a room and went to restaurant afterwards. There are many restaurants closed earlier than usual or can’t let people eat in because they don’t have enough space, so we just had something random.
Then I took a train to go back. It’s still quite empty. By the way at least on this train the toilet can’t be used. I wonder how would people travel longer.
On 31.05 and 01.06, I was working with the musicians in a studio. This is the very fusion Ramen we had for lunch on the second day. The soup is even red curry soup…
Some other foods bought on the same day (kit-kat ice-cream, oolong bubble tea, and vegetarian curry):
I didn’t earn any money from the work but working did let me feel like I can have more enjoyment without guilty.
A notice I found in station, not the only one telling about the shop is shut down:
A friend in China said after the lockdown, ALL shops around the university she works are shut down forever. The economics is damaged so much everywhere. In China the government is even encouraging street market for the first time. They were regarded as a shame of the city and the ugliness in city landscape for decades. But now there is really no reason to suppress people from surviving.
More things happened these days, except the SpaceX, most of them are just very bad news. For immigrant students and researches who have a Chinese root, this year could be the hardest year since 1990. I don’t understand why there are still people trying to find some “good points” of the pandemic. For example the so-called improvement in pollution during lockdown, I think it’s just the same like loosing weight by not eating, either you die or your weight will be back.
If the lockdown helped my anyhow, the first thing is it let me recognise what I’m really NOT interested in. I was always using “no time” as an excuse to not practice classical pieces (especially on violin), now I know I really don’t like it. And there are something else like a full-time job which my family putting stress on me to find, because of the pandemic their expectation became lower, so I had the chance to think whether I really want them. The second thing is I can take it granted to socialise online only, which made my bad offline socialising skill less awkward.
In a word, the pandemic gave people a reason and a chance to not be excellent. But I guess those “positive” people won’t think that’s a good thing.
Dong Zhou 